On June 2, 2015, the UN held a high-level conference honoring the 65th anniversary of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The conference featured 25 listed speakers, all praising UNRWA's work and many condemning and demonizing the State of Israel.
Despite featuring an entire day's worth of anti-Israel presentations, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness attempted to cut off the remarks of Israeli Ambassador Roet, the sole pro-Israel voice. In his remarks at the conference, Ambassador Roet had harsh words for UNRWA.
Ambassador Roet's remarks included:
"UNRWA has a political agenda which casts a long shadow over its humanitarian agenda...
When UNRWA was established, their mandate included hundreds of thousands of refugees. Today, UNRWA asserts responsibility for over 5 million refugees.
How did the number of refugees increase so dramatically when the purpose of a UN agency is to decrease it?
In 1950, the UN established the High Commissioner for Refugees to assist men, women, and children in dire situations around the world... According to the UNHCR, you lose your refugee status if you become a citizen of another country. But in the Palestinian case, this restriction does not apply. UNRWA – and UNRWA alone - allows refugees to pass their refugee status to their children and now grandchildren.
If we were to apply UNHCR's standards to count the number of Palestinian refugees worldwide, the figure drops significantly. But the Palestinian refugees aren't counted using the UNHCR standards; they are counted using UNRWA's double standards.
If this politicization of the refugee issue was not enough, recently, UNRWA left no doubt about how deep its 'political mission' goes. UNRWA's spokesperson clearly stated that one of UNRWA's goals is to validate the Palestinian narrative. I repeat- to validate the Palestinian narrative.
Is 'validating' the Palestinian narrative within UNRWA's mandate? Is this what funding for humanitarian assistance is intended for?...
UNRWA must choose the right path. It must choose people over politics, neutrality over bias, and truth over propaganda. Only this path can solve the refugee problem rather than perpetuating it."